[declan_roberts]

We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters, so companies are increasingly relying on odious technology to handle the problem themselves, which is in turn denied.

The result is we're going to all get punished for it. Increasingly we're going to see a return policy that is less and less flexible until one day it is eliminated altogether.

[aerostable_slug]

And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membership & entry.

Memberships also give retailers a way to kick miscreants out of an entire chain (vs. trespassing them from one location) and keep them out without risking a lawsuit for profiling or other verboten activities.

If I opened a store in San Francisco tomorrow it would be some kind of membership only deal, maybe a co-op to appeal to local politics. No way would I allow the general public inside unless I were selling bulk concrete or something else equally impossible to shoplift.

[mothballed]

It might be interesting to have some kind of "shoplifter insurance" card paired with facial recognition you have to show to enter, rather than a store-specific membership. If you steal it is an "at-fault incident" that raises your rates, but no need to deal with the legal system for the store to get the money back.

People that steal a lot would have high insurance rates and would eventually have to order all their food from one of those stores with the prison bars in front.

People that don't steal would have minimal to no insurance rates and would not be paying shrinkage for those that do.

[nutjob2]

In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters.

What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.

[Hilift]

Unfortunately the state will never be able to stop or prevent it. There needs to be arrests and prosecutions though, and that is where the problems start. For a interesting example, look at California. A few years back, the state reverted medium-serious crimes back to the county for detainment. This moved the cost of incarceration back to the source, however, those inmates cannot be released. So if there is an overcrowding/capacity concern, the low-level offenses such as retail theft are often immediately released even if they are a repeat habitual recidivist offender with no disincentive to offend again.

For a vision of the future, look at YouTube videos of walking tours of San Francisco and Oakland. Entire streets for lease, 38% commercial availability rate. The Crocker Mall and San Francisco Centre Mall are empty, the latter for sale, losing over $1 billion in value.

Probably doesn't matter though, because most people ditched shopping and do everything online now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/auction-san-franci...

SF Centre Mall tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3JXQoM9AU

SF Crocker Galleria tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuSQSA3brA

[dsr_]

If only there were some way to substantially reduce the incentive for theft of consumer goods.

What could motivate people to theft? They must need something awfully badly. Perhaps fixing the underlying requirements could help.

[brightball]

I always wondered about framing this as a sort of self-defense position.

When I was working on a site a decade ago where people were constantly defrauding the users we built a lot of tools to creatively deal with these people to make them less effective. It became very clear that law enforcement wasn't prepared to deal with the problem (at the time at least, maybe they've gotten better) so we had to figure out anything that we could do to protect our users.

The fact that you're essentially only allowed to play defense is IMO the reason it keeps happening. If we were able to hire a cybersecuurity company to hack the people defrauding our users for us, we would have done it in a heartbeat and it would have been worth every penny. It always seemed like, in the US at least, this could have fallen under the 2nd amendment as a self defense response.

[JohnMakin]

The issue, of course, with collecting biometric data to stop a problem like this is you are also collecting data from people who haven't done anything wrong at all. One false positive "anomaly" in the system, or a data breach, exposes innocent people to risk they were not informed about.

[p_j_w]

Your crisis doesn't exist, at least not in the US: https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191247/reported-larceny-t...

[jdasdf]

I can reduce reported crime rates by simply not doing anything about the crime that is reported for extended periods of time. People understand that reporting does nothing and so they stop bothering to do it.

[_9ptr]

Is it only California?

[crooked-v]

> The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters

National larceny rates in at least the US (but I'm fairly sure most Western countries) have consistently gone down for decades. There's significantly less shoplifting now on average than there was in the '80s or '90s.

[mhuffman]

>There's significantly less shoplifting now on average than there was in the '80s or '90s.

possibly, but are you seriously comparing now to the height of the crack epidemic in the US?

[buckle8017]

How could you possibly know that.

Retailers have no reason to report crime they do not expect to be investigated or prosecuted.

Don't say insurance because nobody is reporting shoplifting to their insurance.

[eitau_1]

When personal responsibility fails to be exercised, personal liberty suffers.

[stubish]

Modern shops are designed to encourage purchasing. And security discourages purchasing. So just enough is done to keep shoplifting below a manageable level while maximizing profits. The use of invasive systems here is an attempt to increase security without discouraging purchasing, because it is invisible. Thankfully this one got caught by the watchdogs.

[mrguyorama]

>We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters

This is still an utter bullshit narrative. Not only does "the state" not even try to go after coordinated shoplifting rings, but shoplifting has not statistically increased

Shrink has not increased.

The National Retail Federation, the lobbying org publishing industry wide shrink statistics suddenly declined to publish the numbers this year, while instead pushing forward a survey of their members that say they all feel shoplifting is worse.

Why do you think they would suppress that data unless it doesn't align with the narrative they are selling?

[standardly]

Can you give one hypothetical example as to how a state might "stop" shoplifters?

edit: thought crime police?

[PieTime]

We’re living in a time of income inequality and this is the natural result.

[j_w]

I'm not sure that I would agree with the claim that the state is unable to stop shoplifters. The case here was Australia, but speaking to the United States:

You can't really do anything about shoplifting until after it happens. It's not a crime until it's been committed, then you can prosecute. The issue is there is a base level cost to do so, and it's going to take a very large amount of shoplifting to balance that. We as a society have basically accepted that certain crimes don't go punished, and it seems like low value shoplifting largely fits that category.

In turn, large companies have decided that they will instead collect data on their own until they have enough to make it a high value issue, with proof. Then the state will prosecute. The issue here is that companies do not get to illegally collect data, they still would have to do so within the bounds of the law. So what are those bounds? We say the Government can surveil us with impunity, but only for terrorism or whatever else gets brought under that umbrella. For "petty" crimes the government would need permission to collect the amount of data that these companies are and then build their case with that.

This isn't to say that shoplifting is okay, just that society doesn't seem to care all that much. Our reaction to companies taking actions like these will also show how much we seem to care about them as well. Spoiler on that last one: we don't seem to care (in the US).

[mothballed]

It definitely depends on the state and store policy.

A Walmart in AZ has sent gigantic bouncers after me to detain me on suspicion of shoplifting a $5 bag of cat litter. In my state they are allowed to kidnap/imprison you until police arrive if they have 'reasonable suspicion' you're in the act of shoplifting, so yeah have fun guessing whether the guy with the walmart badge is actually security or just a rapist.

[Der_Einzige]

We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too.

That's what Trump/MAGA america wants. They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. They will gleeful cheer it on.

[ToucanLoucan]

This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end.

First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible.

The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders.

However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door.

And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to.

And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money.

So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.

[dmitrygr]

Many states are [edit: almost] completely able to stop shoplifters. If yours is not, think long and hard about your choices at the next election.

Edit: I do love the down votes. It kind of proves the point. People want to complain, but don’t want to do anything about it or hold themselves responsible for the fact that they are the ones who chose the situation they are in. Literally. At the ballot box.

[stickfigure]

The larceny/theft rate in Kansas City, MO is between 5X and 10X the rate of San Francisco, CA.

Remind me again who I should be voting for?

[wat10000]

What state has a zero shoplifting rate? You're being downvoted because you made a politically motivated statement that's very clearly untrue.